Strike the Blood - Volume 19 - Chapter 1.3

3

About fifteen minutes passed until Mark Ugaki woke up.

He’d been bluntly set down on the floor of the abandoned coast guard building. This was not intentional humiliation of any kind; the sofas and benches in the building just weren’t big enough to support Ugaki’s huge body.

He’d tossed around in his sleep and bumped the floor, and the resulting pain made him regain consciousness. Peering in at Ugaki from the side with a look of concern was Kanon.

“Um… Are you all right?” she asked.

“Y…yeah…”

Ugaki blinked in wonder at the silver-haired, blue-eyed girl calling to him so gently. He must have had difficulty accepting the sight before him as real.

Kanon smiled softly in relief, an expression that could brighten the whole world.

“…Is this…heaven?”

Ugaki exhaled, enraptured. He really thought Kojou had killed him earlier.

Kojou gave Ugaki’s forehead a good, hard smack. “Like hell it is. You just got scared and fainted from the blast!”

“Guoaah?!”

Groaning from the pain in his forehead, Ugaki looked like he’d just woken up from a dream. His gaze shifted to Kojou’s face, whereupon he gasped, visibly wary as he sat up.

“Y-you’re that…!”

“Please do not move.”

When Ugaki sat up, a silver blade was pointed right at his throat. The cold sensation made Ugaki draw in his breath.

“This spear nullifies demonic energy. Your troll healing ability will be of no use.”

Yukina, poised with Snowdrift Wolf at the ready, emotionlessly looked down at Ugaki as she spoke. In terms of angelic appearance, she was hardly inferior to Kanon, but Yukina’s hostility made her come off like an angel of death.

Asagi, seated in a cheap office chair, crossed her legs as she coldly said, “Your allies ran away, so I’m not sure how far your precious healing power would get you anyway.”

The two of them were so irritated from having seen the wrecked Keystone Gate. Now that they knew Itogami Island was in far greater danger than they had assumed, they had precious little time to be dealing with the likes of Ugaki. In the worst case, they’d have to resort to threats and intimidation to make Ugaki talk.

Fortunately, Ugaki seemed to have long lost his will to resist already. Seeing Kojou’s Beast Vassal up close had definitely affected him. There would be no need to resort to further violence.

“I guess I’ll ask the first question,” Kojou said, his tone serious. “What happened on Itogami Island while we were gone?”

Ugaki’s gaze wandered as Yukina touched the tip of her spear to his throat. “Er, um…asking what happened isn’t very specific…”

Asagi savagely slammed the top of a steel desk, her patience worn thin. “When was Keystone Gate wrecked? Who did it?”

“Th-that was the Fourth Primogenitor—”

“What?!” Kojou roared, eyebrows raised.

Ugaki cringed. “I’m not lyin’! It’s the truth, Big Bro!”

“When did I become your…?! Whatever. Give us some details, dammit!”

Enraged, Kojou grabbed Ugaki by his collar and lifted him up, shaking his huge troll neck back and forth enough that it rattled.

“Y-yesterday… No, the night before yesterday. Keystone Gate got raided by a group calling themselves the Order of the End.”

“…Order of the End?”

The unfamiliar name made Kojou tilt his head. A perplexed expression came over Yukina as well.

“They wear creepy masks that look like skulls. They tell people they’ve been servin’ the true Fourth Primogenitor since ancient times…,” Ugaki explained, timid.

“The true Fourth Primogenitor…” Asagi rested her cheek on her palm. “I don’t like this.”

A mysterious group claiming to serve the Fourth Primogenitor attacked under cover of darkness, decimating Keystone Gate. She could hardly blame people for mistaking the perpetrator of Keystone Gate’s wrecking for the Fourth Primogenitor.

“What the hell’s the Island Guard up to?” Yaze cut in. “They should’ve been on special alert.”

The possibility of sorcerous terrorism occurring during Kojou’s temporary absence from Itogami Island had been considered in advance. Naturally, the Gigafloat Management Corporation had initiated countermeasures, bolstering the Island Guard’s numbers and even requesting support from the Lion King Agency. He would never have thought Keystone Gate would fall that easily.

Ugaki turned to Yaze in incredulity. “People say they were wiped out!”

“Wiped…out…?” Yaze blinked in abject shock.

If Keystone Gate’s defense force had been wiped out, that meant Natsuki Minamiya—the Witch of the Void—as well as Koyomi Shizuka—Paper Noise—had been defeated as well. Anyone familiar with their might would find such a tale hard to believe.

“From what I heard, three people from the Order of the End took over the Gigafloat Management Corporation headquarters, the City Management System included. The proof is…right here.”

Ugaki showed them the demon registration bracelet he wore on his left wrist. A complex symbol of multilayered geometric shapes was hovering on the screen of the bracelet-style ID device’s screen.

Yukina’s voice was sharp. “The ritual magic spell you used earlier?”

Ugaki fidgeted in fear and nodded. “This proves you’re a ruler candidate. The right to use this an’ make pacts with subjects was granted to all demons. The more subjects you have, the bigger the demonic energy the ruler candidate gets.”

Kojou snorted in exasperation. “So that’s why you were doing the hard sell earlier.”

Ugaki lowered his eyes with a guilty expression. “Sorry ’bout that.”

Maybe he’d reflected on what he’d done; he started talking about it in dribs and drabs without anyone having to push.

“At first people treated it like a little game. But along the way, it escalated to nabbing subjects and felt a whole lot more like tryin’ to kill one another. To win, you gotta gather up all the subjects you can, and if you can’t, the only other way is gettin’ under a powerful ruler candidate’s banner.”

“A game?! If they take energy from people at a rate like that, there’s no way subjects’ll be able to hold out! One screwup and normal humans or even demons with low endurance will shrivel up and die!” Kojou yelled.

Asagi spoke as if chiding the irritated Kojou for his anger. “The group that set this up doesn’t seem to care about that.”

Kojou clenched his teeth. “The Order of the End…”

He wasn’t inclined to fully trust Ugaki, but at the very least, the troll seemed to have told them the truth up to that point. They’d already confirmed that the demon registration bracelets had been hacked, and they’d seen him collect demonic energy from his subjects. Keystone Gate had indeed been destroyed. More importantly, he didn’t think the guy had the guts to lie under the circumstances.

“So what did this Order of the End group want to use you all for?” Kojou asked.

“The Electoral War,” Ugaki replied in earnest. “It’s a no-holds-barred competition between ruler candidates, and the candidate to survive and win and unify all the domains gets to rule Itogami Island in the Fourth Primogenitor’s place, they say.”

“In the Fourth Primogenitor’s place? Who the hell went and decided something like that?” Kojou growled. He had little appreciation of being the ruler of Itogami Island, but that didn’t mean Kojou was all right with someone arbitrarily having his successor picked behind his back.

But the individual’s name on Ugaki’s lips was not what he’d expected.

“Th-the Fourth Primogenitor.”

“Whaaat?”

“That’s right. The Fourth Primogenitor said so in this promo video that’s, like, everywhere.”

“A video?”

“Yeah. If you doubt me, just turn the TV on. Doesn’t matter what channel you pick, either.”

Ugaki pointed to a small LCD monitor at the corner of the cabin. It was a completely common TV for domestic use. It belonged to the coast guard. A remote control was placed on the wall nearby.

Nagisa, right by the wall, reached out to the TV and turned the power on.

The individual displayed upon the screen was far outside Kojou’s expectations. He was a handsome boy with a delicate physique.

“?!”

Yukina lifted her face as if someone had slapped her. There was an air of anger and fear hovering in her eyes. The fingers with which Yukina gripped her silver spear made little spasms from the strain.

“Him…? Why?!”

“…Himeragi? You know this guy?” Kojou asked, surprised by Yukina’s reaction. It was the first time Kojou had seen Yukina show such aggressive emotion on her face.

“…He’s…!” Yukina tried to explain, but her emotions had run so far ahead that she couldn’t get the words out.

That instant, the boy on the TV screen slowly opened his mouth, his eyes remaining shut as he spoke.

“This announcement is for all humans, as well as all demons residing on Itogami Island.”

He had white skin and golden hair that billowed like a flame. Kojou had déjà vu just from looking at him. For no particular reason, the sight of a boy looking so much like her unnerved him.

The boy smiled beautifully as he continued.

“My name is The Blood, ruler of the Dominion of Itogami city-state. Some call me the Fourth Primogenitor, the World’s Mightiest Vampire.”

His voice was melodic as it solemnly spread throughout the darkness.

Kojou and the others stood in a daze as they watched him smile.